2 dead, 18 injured in China knife attack

The 30-year-old attacker is in police custody after the assault and the case is under investigation.

A bloodstained knife, as part of the evidence, is pictured outside the High Court as police carry it away after the double murder trial of British former banker Rurik Jutting in Hong Kong, China November 8, 2016.Reuters (Representational Image)

At least two people died and 18 people were injured in an attack by a knife-wielding man, who is believed to be mentally ill, in China's Guizhou Province, the latest such attack in the country. The 30-year-old attacker is in police custody after the assault and the case is under investigation.

On Monday, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported that the man's father said his son has a history of mental illness. The authorities said all the 20 victims were rushed to hospital after the attack, but two victims died later.

Knife attacks are quite common in China. In recent years, there has been a series of such attacks in the country, many of which were targeted at children.

In January, a man armed with a kitchen knife stabbed 11 children at a kindergarten in China's southern Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

In February 2016, a knife-wielding assailant wounded 10 children in Haikou, in the southern island province of Hainan, before committing suicide. Again in 2014, the state media had reported that a man stabbed three children and a teacher to death and wounded several others in a rampage at a primary school that refused to enrol his daughter.

That followed a March 2013 incident in which a man killed two relatives and then slashed 11 people, including six children, outside a school in China's commercial hub Shanghai.

In the recent decades, violent crime has been on the rise in China as the nation's economy has boomed and the gap between rich and poor has expanded rapidly.